New Netflix documentary examines the tragedies faced and life unexpectedly ended by Anna Nicole Smith.
Playboy model and actress Anna Nicole Smith led a tragic life that ended with a drug overdose in February 2007 at the age of 39. The previous year, Smith’s 20-year-old son, Daniel, had died in a similar fashion.
Netflix’s new Ursula MacFarlane-directed documentary The Unknown Anna Nicole Smith investigates her life, revealing shocking truths and lies that Smith would have preferred to keep hidden.
She was the epitome of perfect femininity, director Ursula McFarlane told People magazine.
All his life he tried to be what he thought other people wanted him to be. I don’t know that even Anna Nicole knew who she was.
In 1992, Smith managed to rise from a small-town waitress to the cover of Playboy and the face of Guess jeans thanks to her beauty.
She had roles in The Man and the Naked Gun 33 1/3 and The Coen Brothers’ Powerpuff Girls, among other films. She flashed on billboards, charmed talk show hosts like Jay Leno and Arsenio Hall, and dazzled on the red carpet at the Oscars.
,
She was the epitome of perfect femininity.
A new Netflix documentary was released about the life of Anna Nicole Smith. Photo: Andrea Renault / Zuma / MVfotos
Anna Nicole Smith aka Vicki Lynn Hogan was first married to Billy Smith when she was only 17 years old. A year later, they had a son, Daniel. The marriage ended in 1993.
In 1994, when Smith was 26, she married J. Howard Marshall, an 89-year-old oil billionaire. She met Marshall while working at a strip club. The man bought her a house, diamonds and a car and provided financial stability for her and her son Daniel.
The man died of pneumonia the following year.
Smith engaged in a years-long legal battle with one of Marshall’s sons over his share of Marshall’s estate. Marshall reportedly left Smith in his will. The matter was debated all the way up to the Supreme Court, but in the end Smith didn’t get a cent.
– I know people think I married Howard for his money. But it is not true. I love him, Smith said according to People magazine.
Smith was also a constant target of the paparazzi. In the end, he decided to give his all to the cameras. In 2002, she started her own reality TV show, The Anna Nicole Show.
– It’s terrible, what do I have to do to be like me, Smith, who died at the age of 39, is rumored to have said.
Hollywood put them in the fast lane. Smith’s uncle George Beall told the American newspaper, “I think it ruined him more than anything else.”
,
Hollywood put them in the fast lane.
However, there are many questions surrounding Smith.
– He invented a lot of things, says his friend Missy Byram directly.
A friend, Byrum, met Smith at a Houston strip club where she worked in the early 1990s.
All of us girls were taken advantage of in one way or another and we spoke about it. Byrum told the magazine that nothing like this had happened to him in the past.
The sad stories attracted a lot of attention. Later, Byrum was shocked to learn that Smith was telling Byrum’s story of abuse as his own.
– She learned by stripping that men want to believe that if you’re pretty you’re stupid. He always said, “It takes a really smart person to be stupid,” Bryrum continues.
According to Briram, Smith underwent all kinds of cosmetic surgery, including four breast augmentations and more.
His gums were cut to enlarge his teeth. She had pregnancy scars on her breasts from giving birth, so a beautician sanded off all the skin around her nipples. She was in constant pain.
According to Briram, everyone fell in love with Smith.
Me too, he says.
Anna Nicole Smith lived a colorful life. Photo: Fitzroy Barrett / Zuma / MVPhotos
Smith and his friend Briram began a secret relationship in 1992. Byrum says Smith proposed to her in 1993.
– He gave me the rings and we got married with champagne in the backyard swimming pool. He wanted me to have a child with him. However, I always knew it would come to nothing because he was never going to settle down with one person.
Byrum says he left Smith because he was suffering from a crippling drug addiction and it had become too overwhelming.
– He needed love more than any human being.
Smith did not grow up with his biological father and according to the documentary, he blames his mother for this. Smith hires a private investigator to find his father and excitedly sets out to meet him and his biological brother.
The meeting coincided with Smith being named Playboy’s Playmate of the Year. Smith took his father and brother to a party at the Playboy Mansion. However, the meeting did not go as expected. Briram says in the documentary that Smith told her the biological father tried to take advantage of her sexually during the meeting.
Smith’s closest friends, the couple Pol’ Ateu and Patrick Simpone, claim that Anna Nicole was a character. The couple became close with Smith during his final years.
– She played Anna Nicole, says Ateau.
– They were two different people. Others were famous superstars and TV personalities. A cocky, silly blonde, the kind of guy she wanted who would bring her a paycheck. The other was deeply humanitarian. Intimate, the real Anna Nicole. Smart businessman.
Close friends of Anna Nicole Smith describe her as a blonde superstar, a deep human being and a smart business woman. Photo: Globe Photos/Zuma/MVPhotos
Ateau describes a woman who made deals with the paparazzi to make money, giving them tips about her whereabouts. He realized that sad stories about him would pay off more. Even if they are not their own.
Smith’s mother, Virgie Mae Hogan, who died in 2018, once asked her daughter why she lies so much. Hogan explains the story, recalling Smith’s reaction in the documentary:
I make more money telling sad stories than good ones. Whenever my name appears in the news, I earn money. If it’s bad, something really bad, I make 50 times more than if it’s good.
Smith died in 2007 at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel. Photo: David Jacobs/Zuma/MVPhotos
In the early 2000s, Smith met photographer Larry Birkhead. Their joint daughter, Danielle, was born in September 2006. Smith’s firstborn son Daniel, 20, who was visiting his new little sister in a Bahamas hospital, died of a drug overdose in his mother’s hospital room.
Five months after Daniel’s death and Danielle’s birth, Smith also died of a drug overdose in 2007 at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Florida.
The drama continued behind the scenes. According to ABC News, Birkhead became embroiled in an epic custody battle over Daniellin until a paternity test proved that Birkhead was the child’s father. Attorney Howard K. Stern and several other men also claimed to be the father of the child. The case made international headlines.
When he died, it was quite a circus, remembers friend Byram.
– He must have liked it. I thought: “He will die as he lived. He attracts everyone’s attention. And so he got it.
The Unknown Anna Nicole Smith documentary was released on Netflix on May 16, 2023.
